One of the many unpleasant ads running as the election season reaches a frenzy, a scant 7 months before the election, is one criticizing John Kerry’s support for a 50 cent per gallon federal gas tax increase. You can read the allegations from Bush, and the defense from Kerry. Unfortunately I couldn’t locate the ad itself, in part because the Bush website doesn’t have a section labeled ‘Attack Ads’.

Whatever the truth in this spat (which seem to revolve around the meaning of the word ‘support’), I was intrigued by the Bush ad’s description of the idea. I forget the exact word used, but it was something like ‘kooky’ or ‘wacky’ or ‘weird’ . Whatever, the implication was clearly that this was such a far-out, stupid idea that just thinking about it shows a deep character flaw or reckless stupidity.

So, is it really such an unthinkable idea? 300 million Europeans tolerate it, even if they’re not particularly happy with it. That doesn’t make it a great idea, and indeed it could even be a bad idea, but it’s not freakishly outlandish.

Perhaps it’s the size of the tax burden that would be created? The existing tax is 18.4 cents per gallon (a spuriously precise number, incidentally; presumably 18 cents was laughably inadequate, but 19 cents was an egregious burden?). Adding 50 cents would give us an average gas price at the moment of around $2.30, of which 68.4 cents, or a shade under 30%, is tax. A 30% tax rate is clearly higher than almost any basic sales tax throughout the world, but apart from being lower than the gas tax in many other countries, it’s also lower than the two higher tax bands in the US. If it’s so ridiculous to tax gas, a convenience, at that level, how much worse is it to tax income, the thing that provides food warmth and shelter, at even higher rates? Obviously the Republicans (and perhaps even the Democrats) don’t like those high rates, but they’re not actually risible.

The only thing left is the size of the increase, and this brings us to the crux of the argument. An increase of that size, in isolation, is a big deal. If anything gets increased four-fold, even a good thing (“I’m going to quadruple your allowance!”), we are naturally suspicious, because things don’t naturally change that much. And without context all we’re left with is that unnatural change.

The particular context of Kerry’s support is irrelevant; he could have supported it to pay for more teachers, or to cut income taxes, or even just to stick it to SUV drivers. The important thing is that it had a reason, and when a change has a reason it generally becomes, by definition, reasonable. Not necessarily a good idea, and perhaps even an awful idea, but at least worthy of debate.

Bush’s ad doesn’t provide that back story, and it’s not his job to do so. But its omission creates an easy target for him to attack, and for the voting masses to get incensed over, without ever having to think about what it means. Unfortunately the hundreds of millions of dollars the candidates will raise or have spent for them will be used largely to propagate just this kind of mindless, knee-jerk reaction; it doesn’t cost 200 million dollars per side to run a series of one-on-one debates. Both parties will be equally guilty of this (the Democratic side is running an ad with the tagline “Shouldn’t America be his top priority?”, which is every bit as dishonest as the Republican attacks). All that would be distressing enough, if it weren’t for the fact that so many of the people who aren’t already hard-wired to vote Republican or Democrat, come what may, will vote according to the ads, not the ideas.